Best Practices in Vendor and Project Management

An e-Vent on Pharma Social Media

I’m at a conference on Physician Relationship Management (MDRx). As usual, we’re talking e-marketing, social media, and fear. If you know pharma, you know that anything new is embraced with enthusiastic expressions of…terror.

Often, the starting points for these discussions are the following:

1. How are we going to do this and keep clean on the regulatory front?

2. What’s the quickly-demonstrable ROI?

3. Risk. Risk. Risk.

4. Who else is doing it?

So, of course, these starting points doom the participants – who often are in short-term marketing rotations – to think about “safety in tactics,” rather than strategic opportunities.

Careful – you might shoot your eye out.

There are structural reasons in this industry for this mentality. However, if we’re going to make any progress, I’d like to suggest that anyone thinking about Networked Communications strategies in pharma START with only two perspectives:

1. What are the needs of our audience(s)?

2. How can we add value?

That’s it. Begin the initial discussions there and leave all the other stuff for the last 5 minutes, or you’ll never approach it with an opportunity mindset. Now I know that all these other concerns have to be addressed, but that’s like choosing your outfit only after putting on handcuffs and chains.

The two questions you raise are exactly how I have been trying to get them to focus, but the climate of fear is pretty overwhelming in many places right now and they are scared of making mistakes. Sad really.

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Steve Woodruff
President, Impactiviti

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